On Fever Dreams and Hunting [Comments/Critique Welcome]

An introductory story for my Bosmer character, in an attempt to explain how she got started. Like the title says, any kind of response is completely appreciated.

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Her hands felt the cold, damp earth as she staggered onwards, too numb to register the sensation of pain from the numerous bleeding cuts from thorns and branches on her fragile skin. She couldn't find the strength to scream, but she could plead.

"Y'ffre, hear me... " Her voice barely carried over the rain. She wasn't sure where she was, but it smelled like forest, and all she could feel was the agonizing burning inside her. She crawled on; slowly dragging herself through the forest in hopes of ending her pain. A faint glowing flitted through her blurry vision just behind the trees, and something compelled her to go towards it.

"Y'ffre, p-pleas-" She stopped to dry heave. A part of her brain asked if this is what dying felt like. She was sure it was. The light came closer. But when it spoke, it was not Y'ffre.

"A little faun, left out to die?" The voice, obviously male, obviously mocking, belonged to a blindingly bright stag. She couldn't keep her eyes on it. The part of her mind still capable of thought again chimed in, telling her she was hallucinating. Deer do not glow.

"H-help..." She managed, and the stag lowered its head to examine her.

"There is a man in this forest who's been killing my hounds. If you can take him down, I will cure you." The ethereal beast's lips didn't move to speak, but each word came out clearly. She nodded, and let her head loll uselessly. The rest of her body began to feel just as limp, and she collapsed into darkness.

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When she awoke, the only thing on her body was blood- crusted long enough to know it had been there for a while, and it was not her own. Two things crossed her mind: horror, and exhilaration. She had never felt this healthy in her life, but... the blood. Was her dream real? She brushed the dried blood off her skin, thinking she would find some kind of mark to prove it real, though she wasn't sure she wanted it to be real. No marks whatsoever, not even the little scratches she normally had from forest travel.

She strained to remember what she could of the previous night. Sickness, pain. Her family had left her out to die, after it was finally decided she could not be cured. She sneered at the memory, curling up against a tree to comfort herself.

She couldn't be too angry, though. Growing up, she had been a frail little thing, catching every illness and then some. It was a struggle for her family, financially and emotionally, to watch her come so close to death more often than any parents deserve. The anger dissipated, and she looked around. The forest looked beautiful in its towering trees and mottled rays of sunlight, a brilliant, warm green everywhere she could see. Lovely, and homey... except for the trail of blood.

She pushed herself up to follow it, hoping this person was still alive. She could apologize, tell them she'd gone mad in a fit of deadly fever, and she could patch them up. The thought comforted her, but the trail grew thicker as it went. The blood didn't smell right, either.

Her fears were confirmed on reaching the source- his neck was broken, dead eyes staring up at her from an unnatural angle. His chest cavity had been ripped open entirely and the contents consumed. A beautiful bow lay several feet away, arrows strewn across the ground. Everything she saw told the story, but it was a story she had no desire to believe. She swallowed, and approached the corpse hesitantly.

It made no movement.

She smiled- an expression meant more to comfort herself than to show any actual enjoyment of the grisly scene before her, and she unfastened his cloak to throw over herself, for some sake of modesty.

"Sorry," she mutters, looking into the placid face for a moment before checking the rest of the body. She refused to believe she had killed him. A little thing like her, breaking someone's neck? A medical detachment overcomes her before the thought could wreak too much havoc in her mind.

While there was little on his body of interest- a nice sword that had seen plenty of use- he had an excellent bag of survival gear, and a fair amount of money on him. She couldn't consider the moral implications of this. She was surviving, and, quite possibly for the first time in her life, she felt she could thrive, too.

Fastening the cloak into something more like a hooded dress, she takes the bag, the arrows and the bow, and takes her first steps into a new life.

"May you remain forever strong and honor-bound!" -Jsmund Maaljornsen
"What use is a trinket if it's not being stolen?" -Redrian "the Snatcher" Voldarys
"Blood is thicker than water, but even water is thicker than the chains that hold this world together." - Cyentiach Solactaro